So what was I saying about the Minutemen the other day? Oh, yeah. I called them racist vigilantes who can't hold a steady job.

I caught flak from Minutemen, as expected. But I also got it from a few nonaligned folk who asked me if I'd ever gone down to the border and spent any time talking to Minutemen. What? You expect me to back up my rants with actual reporting? Well, no, I hadn't. So on the first day of my vacation, I took Deborah Courtney up on her offer to take me down. I'd met Deborah through her victims-rights advocacy at a time when Jim Gilchrist was still an obscure former accountant and wannabe journalist, and the only Minutemen I could name was Paul Revere. I knew she had a good heart. I could never figure out why she got involved in the Minutemen. Or why anyone would become a Minuteman, unless they were Mexican-hating vigilantes who like to play with guns in the desert.

Doesn't it really boil down to whether you have it in your heart to open your door to your fellow man, even if it causes discomfort? One of the last guys I'd want to be when I meet my maker is the innkeeper in Bethlehem who said he had no vacancies. Truly. I can't say my border trip answered all my questions. I only met five Minutemen. I only spent a half-day at the border itself. But I feel more qualified to throw the "R" or "V" words if I chose.

I met Courtney at the Laguna Hills Mall parking lot early Saturday and hopped into her gold Acura SUV. Minuteman Scott Powelson was driving and Courtney's husband, Paul Sielski, also a Minuteman, was with us, too. I thought there'd be tension. If there was, I didn't notice, probably because these three Minutemen are far more at odds with Gilchrist than with me. They're among the leadership of the faction Gilchrist has sued claiming he is the sole leader. (Gilchrist has since attempted to drop the lawsuit but officially it is still open, and the Courtney faction says it wants it to continue to litigate and get into official hands what really went on behind the scenes.) Anyway, our two-hour-plus drive to the border was mainly consumed by the three of them shredding their former ally and playing for me recordings of Minuteman Project meetings at which Gilchrist was challenged.

In one tape, a Minuteman leader named Marvin Stewart tells Gilchrist, "Large sums of cash (were) removed from ATMs that aren't accounted for." Gilchrist can be heard replying it was "only a few hundred dollars." There ensues discussions that go on literally for hours (I'm told) about how much money is missing, where it went, who is responsible, who controls the group, etc. Courtney, who worked in real estate before she became a fulltime Minuteman, told me she's out tens of thousands of dollars in unreimbursed expenses. "I went from having $40,000 in the bank a year ago to being $70,000 in debt," she says.

Are there racists in the group? I ask. A few, they said, although they try to weed them out. One fairly involved guy, they told me, likes to throw around the "N" word and specifically didn't want Stewart to ascend to the presidency of the Minuteman Project because he's black. Another regular likes to extend his arm in the "Heil Hitler" salute. They're exceptions, they say, although they acknowledge the group attracts racists. In fact, just a few weeks before, 10 people identifying themselves as members of the White Legion Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Yucaipa showed up in support of a Minutemen rally in Rancho Cucamonga. The Minutemen left.

You could argue Minuteman Project goals are racist on their face because they largely, though not exclusively, target a single ethnic group. But did I notice anything spoken, gestured or intimated otherwise? Not during my day with them. Among the three of the men I talked to in any depth, I did find one common motivator for their zeal: employment, and the jobs they believe Mexicans have taken from them personally. I'll get to that later.

We are going to the tiny border town of Campo, which is 50 miles east of San Diego and 10 miles east of Tecate. About 45 minutes short of the border, we stop at a grocery store off I-8 to buy food for the handful of Minutemen who live at the border permanently, bivouacking in tents, old RVs or, in one case, in the back of a rusty Suburban. From the 8 we divert to the 94, then to Buckman Springs Road. The two-laner pierces a bucolic setting of small farms and ranchettes dotted with live oak and accented by the occasional cottonwood-lined creekbed. We pull into Campo in the late morning, pass by a café, a video-rental store and few other signs of commercial life, and then come upon the former U.S. Army compound and adjacent Border Patrol station.

I'm not at all surprised the Army compound is deserted. Empty streets lined with World War II-era wood-frame barracks and admin buildings, boarded up. I am surprised, however, that the Border Patrol HQ seems equally bereft of life. At least three dozen BP trucks, SUVs, vans and Jeeps are parked outside - and will remain so all day. I see not a soul. In fact, during my day at the border, I saw not one BP agent. They're out at the highway checkpoints and official border crossings, a Minuteman named Max will tell me later. Meanwhile, he says, Mexicans are coming over, under or through the fence every night. There to "observe and report only" are the likes of "Little Dog," Kingfish" and "Gadget." But after I met Max, I felt I'd found the essence of the movement.

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